Career transition

Don't stick your pinky in your ear

Interesting choice of earphones for a man like him. Makes me wonder what he is listening to.

May be an interesting idea to compose a picture of a manly man using or holding a girly object. 

Xu Bei Hong's horse

Chanced upon Xu Bei Hong's work.
Shaw Building.

Shadows

Walking in a way that my shadow looks like a mermaid's to match the scales on the floor.

Bamboo leaves

A view from beneath. Bamboo plants by the fence of a private estate. I was outside the gate.
Local bamboos tend to be bushy instead of wispy like those in temperate countries.

Nature has good designs. It grew more leaves to adapt to our humidity and climate. 

Skylights @ Bras Basah MRT

A reminder to look at things from different perspectives.

WK1 Assignment: Tim Brown's Tales of Creativity and Play

Assignment


Watch the TED Video Tim Brown: Tales of creativity and play (in Blackboard).
Summarise the 30 Min video into 200 words(you can use bullet points/diagrams).
Place into any of this weeks “a picture a day”

Summary 

• Adult habits
• Tendency to categorise, assimilate, edit (Convergent thinking)
• Must go beyond normal way of thinking and forget "adult behaviors" that get in the way of ideas 
• It’s hard to break these habits.
  
• Trust between collaborators allows play and creativity. 
• e.g. trust frees one from fear of embarrassment, and self-editing of making mistakes
• Play-like behaviors are useful to the creative process, including:
• Exploration
• Divergent thinking
• A stage whereby quantity of ideas is more important than quality
• Building and thinking with hands 
• Especially to better understand materials, 3D design, and product prototyping
• Role-play 
• Encourage empathy for user
• Improve understanding of problem > for better solutions
• Especially relevant for service and process design
• Transitioning in and out of play
• A rule to make play productive
• i.e. Divergence (play, exploration, divergent thinking) and Convergence (editing and refining)
• "...be a serious professional adult and, at times, be playful." Not "OR".  

(150 words)

Reflection

• Freedom
• Instead of trust, the crux is freedom from fear of embarrassment and resultant inhibition
• Besides trust, self-confidence and disregard of others' opinions may encourage sense of freedom.
• To see this in other ways, it's about transitioning between periods of:
• Self-confidence and humility (bordering over-confidence and insecurity)
• Not caring about others, and caring
• On "...be a serious professional and, at times, playful" 
• NOT "playful professional, and at times, serious"
• Irony: "play" here neglects fun
• Focused on practical purposes
• Yet play = "engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose." 
• http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/play
• Thus, Brown's "play" isn't quite play.